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Whoa. What? What? What? What? What? No. What? What?

What? What's good? Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Newst Olympian. My name is Mike Schubert. I'm the titular Newst Olympian. I'm a 30-year-old man who never read the Percy Jackson books as a kid. But I'm reading them now as an adult because I'm on a quest to determine if this is a book series that we've all been sleeping on as a society. I'm not on this quest alone, though.

I am joined by a repeat guest, someone that I have been wanting to get back on the show, as have

many listeners of the podcast. So we're finally making the return happen for Joel Rochester,

who you might know from fictional fates. Joel, how's it going? It's going really well.

As a 22-year-old who's already been on this odyssey of an adventure, I'm just so excited to see, like, how has it been since I've last been on?

And also, like, just go through the Battle of the Labyrinth and these amazing chapters that we'll be discussing, because I just think it's going to be pretty awesome to see how you view everything now.

Yes. When were you? You were last on, was it a book two episode? Was it that long ago?

I think it was a book two.

Oh, so long ago. We've grown and met so many new people. I mean, it's been good. Things are ramping up. These chapters are quite intense that we'll be covering. We'll see how much that we get to cover in this episode. And there's so much happening and so many things going on. And I'm loving it. And as far as my particular journey, I'm all in. I'm all invested. I love it. I'm heavily invested in Annabeth and Percy getting together. I would die for multiple of the characters for Christmas. and this is only for video purposes. And I'm sure this will work well in the audio, but my mom and dad got me the very

pretty hardcover box set, I think from Jupiter or Juniper Books. The ones with the, yeah,

Juniper books, which is funny because I'm currently in a spot where I don't know if Juniper is

just a fun love interest or like a secret villain. So they got me the Juniper book set, which is really nice. They're really pretty. They all really great. They will look very nice on my bookshelf for as the other ones that are used for the job are like very beat up used paperbacks that I got and travel around and throw in my bag and all that kind of stuff. And then they've already spoiled that my birthday present is going to be the Juniper book version of the sequel series, which is apparently very pretty. These are all like a bluish teal for the PJO ones. And apparently the Heroes of Olympus ones are a nice orange color, which will look really nice next to each other.

I'm super stoked. But yeah, that's where I'm at. Things are good. And it's exciting. I'm really happy. And those additions are so pretty as well. Like, I just saw them when I was like, damn. I'm going to have to put that on my birthday list. I mean, my birthday isn't a month from when we're recording this. So I'm like,

Hmm.

Wait, when's your birthday?

...